The greatest lesson I learned in my teens

I want to tell you the story of Laura — one of the greatest and worst guitarists I’ve ever met.

Laura was a member of my youth group in high school. She had never played an instrument before. But she found an old guitar at a pawn shop, bought a Mel Bay book of chords, and started to teach herself.

I, on the other hand, came from a long line of musicians. I had a hand-crafted guitar that made the very angels weep when I strummed it.

I had been practicing since I was 9. And in my high school years, I would play up to 3 hours a day — perfecting my craft.

But this story isn’t about me. It’s about Laura.

She took her pawn shop reject made of balsa wood and baling wire — bought a cable from Radio Shack, and plugged it into a computer. Then she started recording.

Now one thing you must know about recording an acoustic guitar. You never plug it directly into a computer. No, you need microphones, special devices, and expensive software.

But apparently, Laura didn’t know that — or care. So she just recorded her guitar anyway using a piece of software she found for free on the internet.

After recording the tunes, she burned those songs onto a CD and sold them to the old ladies at church.

You should have heard them go on and on about it. They loved the music and bought more as Christmas gifts for unsuspecting relatives.

I got one of her CDs. After listening to the first few minutes, I was disgusted.

Not because it sounded bad or she had poor arrangements.

What tore me up was that I, the fanatic who spent every waking moment listening to cassettes and CDs of some of my great guitar heroes and emulating them. I, the person who practiced three hours a day. I was also working on a CD project.

I had been working on one for years. I arranged the songs — many too hard and complex for me to play at the time, requiring hours of practice to master. I researched the best mics. The best gear. The best software. I saved my money and bought what I needed.

Because of this, I was slowly working toward the perfect album you will never hear.

My disgust for Laura’s work wasn’t because she was a beginner.

My frustration was at the fact that she did something that I couldn’t do. She made something.

The mark of success for me at that time — the goal of all goals — was to make a CD and sell it to the little old ladies at church.

I wanted to be the Christmas gift no one wanted. But that honor went to Laura instead.

This experience taught me an enduring lesson: Makers make. Fakers fake.

If the goal is who can practice the most, I have everyone reading this beat by hundreds if not thousands of hours.

But if the goal is to make music that people can listen to, I lost.

And as painful as the experience was then, I am infinitely grateful for the lesson Laura taught me: we can our time pursuing the unattainable goal of perfection, only to miss what we truly want.

Makers make.

It’s something that I have to remind myself of often. To make a real difference in the world, I have to be okay with good enough.

Perfection is the hiding place of cowards. It’s easy to believe that only the best work will inoculate us from real and imagined criticism.

I don’t know about you, but some of my most viral and successful work has also attracted withering criticism from people I will never meet.

Doing is the goal. Planning is the path.

Makers make things.

They make bad things until they gain enough knowledge to make better things. And they spend hours making better things until one day, they make the excellent things they’ve always wanted.

No one gives you what you want. You have to create until you’re good enough to earn it.

I think of Laura nearly every day, and I try to make something.

P.S.: I ended up recording several albums, but I’m most proud of the song I recorded with my soon-to-be wife — link in the comments.